What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Tech for Development

I've revisited this post after Jobs' untimely passing yesterday. Not a shock, but still incredibly sad; it is astonishing that he had accomplished so much and die at 56. The world will be a poorer place, but I hope his drive for perfection and emphasis on the human element will continue to be embodied in the devices that increasingly define us. If you haven't seen it, his 2005 commencement address at Stanford is the perfect eulogy for the man.

I first fell in love with computers via the Mac Plus my folks brought home in 4th grade; I've been an avid Cult of Mac acolyte ever since. As such it was with great sadness I saw Steve Jobs' classy resignation letter this week.

There's a 1k things to say about Jobs (for good or ill) - but I'd like to tip the hat and emphasize that we in the tech and development space have a lot to learn from him.

Know Your Market

One of the primary thrusts of Jobs' dictatorial reign at Apple has always been to make the technology adjust to the way people work, not the other way around. Remember, back before the Apple II people were expected to be handy with a soldering iron before purchasing a computer for their kids. The Mac OS was the first mass-market system that presented approachable, understandable metaphors for accessing computers. The iPod had a ingenious wheel rather than a dizzying array of itty-bitty keys. The iPhone and iPad make interacting with a device seem almost organic. It's why people like myself (and, apparently, a lot of others) genuinely love our Apple products.

Since so many of us actually love tech it's hard to believe sometimes that it's intimidating and scary to people don't have the experience and comfort with shiny electronics that we do. That goes double in the developing world where electricity may be as recent an addition as the iPhone.

Jobs never lost sight of the centrality of user experience, and it's key to being a good tech for development professional as well. This is why airdropping pallets of computers or pushing sexy new software solutions are absolutely the wrong way to approach the practical problems in development. What will the user experience be for those people we are targeting - from their perspective? Is it going to be easy and friendly given their experiences? Can we chose ways of engaging with technology that seem more familiar to them? Can it be, dare I say, fun?

Think Different

Sometimes those closest to and most knowledgeable about a particular way of solving problems are the ones with the least ability to see a better way forward. I always get a chuckle out of the technology pundits lampooning the most recent Apple product ("A computer tablet? Why would anyone ever want to use one of those?!") Jobs had the genius to go beyond that and give the people what they really wanted and needed - though they might not have realized it themselves.

While we should always be working with partners to listen to their ideas and develop their solutions, there's room for us as tech and dev peeps to try to look a step ahead and propose new, creative solutions. They're not always going to work, but if approached the right way we should dare to try some new ideas.

Insanely Great

Perfection is, regrettably, not a high-probability outcome in the development world, much less with the added chaos and complexity of tech layered on top. However, we in the ICT crowd should hold ourselves to as high a standard as possible . No, we're not going to get rich, and I don't believe NDI will be issuing stock options any time soon. But we reach and impact people's lives, and should have the same passion to create insanely great solutions. Maybe I'll go get myself a black turtleneck and try a bit harder.

I can't think of a more apt tribute to Jobs himself than the attention-grabbing ad campaign Apple ran after his triumphal return: